While you’re busy trying to recoup your money from your numerous investment deals with sports talk radio hosts…

In case you need further proof sports journalism may be done by anyone, the SportsKids interview with Randy Shannon is just as revealing as any interview we’ve read with a coach since the infamous greatness of Michael Lewis’ New York Times Magazine piece on Mike Leach. Did you know Randy Shannon was a fat kid? Or that his favorite soda was grape Nehi, and that his favorite cartoon is the Justice League? No, you didn’t.

We are not joking: this is a cunning tactic. Take a hard-bitten stoic type like Shannon and send in cute kids in ties to disarm him We kept waiting throughout the clip for the earpiece to fall out, for Kirk Herbstreit to fall out of the closet where he’d been feeding questions to the kids through an earpiece, but nope: it’s just them, and their questions don’t actually seem any less substantive than anything we’ve ever seen on a Gameday interview.

Now, if we can just find the perfect keys for the lock to undo Urban Meyer’s tightly wound soul: Jimmy Buffett? A man in a penguin suit with an automatic rifle over one, er…flipper? A naked but casual Marion Cotillard? (Judging from internet research, she may be naked RIGHT NOW ON CAMERA.)

Swindle Industries elsewhere on the nets:

-Bow to Mighty Osiris!

-Other bubblicious musings on hoops found hyah.

-For those interested in Bas-ket-ball…seriously, Patrick’s growing in strength over on 35 Seconds before our very eyes, much like a maturing Colossus or ballooning Oliver Miller in his Trailblazers days.

-And as an apology to the decade of the nineties, proof that is wasn’t all wasted tribal armband tattoos:

The Big Board for the week of 3/10/08 goes red with the introduction of scores from Big Red and the Scarlet Knights. Apologies, snark, and apologies for snark follows below.

It’s 1996 all over again! Nebraska must be on the way to a revival, since scary-looking linemen are being arrested for sexual assault as they were lo, so many years ago in the period of time we like to refer to as the “mid-1990s.” If you weren’t around, O! what a glorious time. No one wore anything interesting, opting instead for Doc Martens, flannel shirts, and shitty, cheap clothing. Perhaps you’ve wondered when the boring, unbright people caught on to the fact that by piercing a tongue, eyebrow, or ear, they could become “alternative,” and therefore not just lumpenfolk? Or what hipsters groan about all the time when they regurgitate tales of how FIERCE that Pavement show where no one danced back in ‘93 was? Or that other band that they loved until someone else expressed admiration for them, thus totally ruining their love for them?

Ya-bingo: that was the nineties. We’re sorry. We didn’t know what we were doing. If we’d known what it would have become, we wouldn’t have donned a single Ministry shirt. (They’re writing NHL songs now. We have no problem with this, having been born into the world at the mental age of a very immature 53 years old. Get money, Al.)

Anyway: Nebraska’s on the board in old-school Huskers fashion. See?

Lincoln Police Capt. Joseph Wright said Christensen, 21, was jailed on suspicion of first-degree sexual assault, resisting arrest and failure to comply.

Wright said Christensen allegedly approached a 23-year-old woman from behind and put his hand under her skirt. Both Christensen and the alleged victim were at the downtown bar at around 12:30 a.m., the time of the incident, Wright said.

Now throw in a couple of national championships and a nationally televised vivisection of an up-and-coming SEC team, and we’re talking revival! Testify! Oh, and six points in the Fulmer Cup: three for the felony sexual assault, one each for the failure to comply and resisting arrest charges, and a bonus point for making us remember how lame the 1990s were in every single fucking way.

Rutgers is on the board, though we’re not sure for how many points thanks to zero information on specific charges. We therefore award twentyleven points to them for defensive tackle Justin Francis’ arrest in Miramar, Florida.

Syracuse football interrupts its usual menu of dismal woe and misery to bring you some zesty incompetent woe and misery: two Fulmer Cup points for two misdemeanor criminal mischief charges for Mikhail Marinovich and Paul Chiara for breaking into the Syracuse equipment room while drunk. Marv, your second perfectly groomed genetic wonder can’t outrun Syracuse police, even while blessed with drunk speed-considering changing your training methods immediately.

No points for USC, since recruit Maurice Simmons was not enrolled at USC or on the team yet, thus making his alleged robbery charges null and void for Fulmer Cup consideration. Simmons should have been more careful; what with Pete Carroll roaming around LA at all hours, the chances of accidentally holding up his head coach weren’t bad, actually.

Correction: FIGHT ON! USC gets two points for brawling defensive lineman Fili Moala and a good old-fashioned barfight.

An intrepid and very attractive reader actually emailed Clemson to express their outrage over Clemson withdrawing the football scholarship of Ray Ray McElrathbey. The response from Clemson’s Tim Bourret:

Dear ——-

While James Davis was not misquoted by the writer in the Charleston Post Courier story you must have read, James did not give an accurate picture of our scholarship commitment to Ray Ray. When the coaches met withRay Ray, which they do with all players, it was made clear to him that if he decided to remain at Clemson his scholarship would be provided. That includes a commitment from our Athletic Director that we would give him a graduate assistant position (that would pay for a Masters degree) within the Clemson Athletic Department after he graduated.
From a football standpoint, coaches met with Ray Ray and made it clear to him that he had four talented running backs ahead of him this fall. We have two of the top running backs in our program’s history currently on the roster and two of the top 10 running back signees in the nation are coming to Clemson this fall. If his future goals involve playing professional football, he needs to get on the field. If he is to get on the field, he needs to transfer to another program
But he has the option to stay here and have his schooling paid for through the next two and a half years.

McElrathbey declined comment, according to the Larry Williams article in the Charleston Post and Courier. We’ve got a call into Larry Williams, the writer who put together the piece, but something does trouble us: if the situation was more complex on both sides than the pat and simple answer of “Bowden’s booting him off the team to free up a scholly,” then why wasn’t that pulled out of the school on the first sweep of reliable sources?

Update: Just got off the phone with Larry Williams, who was more than happy to talk about the pieces, one on Sunday and one on Monday, that covered the situation. Williams isn’t quoted here, and any and all opinions are strictly properties of Swindle Industries, but he did answer our questions and clarified a few things here.

-First, Tim Bourret said as much in a statement yesterday, and was quoted in a piece today saying what he says above. Williams covered that as it came out, and did due diligence here.

-Second, the bit about “his scholarship” being honored is a bit of dodge. McElrathbey’s scholarship is already promised through August, when McElrathbey graduates in three years. They’re renewed year to year, and already promised. The real issue comes with the decision to shift McElrathbey from a four-year scholarship athlete complete with room and board and tuition paid to a grad assistant, a job requiring work in addition to any time he puts in on the field as a player. That is not fulfilling the term of a scholarship.

-Third: McElrathbey represents a nightmare for ambitious college programs, the prospect who doesn’t bloom and takes up a roster spot. He’s a running back sharing space with two blue-chip signees and James Davis and C.J. Spiller, akin to coming up with a few nice pieces of art while living just down the block from Picasso and Chagall. You lose, and it’s not your fault, though McElrathbey hasn’t, as pointed out in Sunday’s piece, been the most responsible player on the squad. (He arguably has more on his plate than most guys on the team, but that’s still an angle here.)

So you have a non-performer taking up spots on the roster. All judgment aside, you have two options: you can not renew the scholly, or you can keep him on and try to find some use for him. Clemson opted here for the first and came up with a concession to make things look less cold, extending a GA job to him to make things a bit less ruthless in the PR department. And hey, at least it wasn’t the SEC dancing on a pinhead re: oversigning this time. You might think this is big-boy football, etc; or you might think a school has a four-year obligation, period. Our guess is that this varies wildly by geography.